What I think about Betty

[sistermagpie]

I was reading a post that referenced a recent article about "show stopper" characters (characters the author felt killed the show dead when they were onscreen for various reasons) and in the course of the discussion somebody made the mistake of asking me what I think about Betty Draper on Mad Men post-divorce. I immediately realized I had way to

Comments

Ooops. Betty, not Sally!

[ptyx]

Wow, great essay. I'm impressed. I hadn't thought of many of those things before, but I think I agree with you on most of them. But I also think that Betty is very immature. It's like she has never grown up. The scenes with the children's psychologist are very revealing.

I'm also a bit puzzled by something you didn't mention: the creepy relationship between Betty and Glen in the previous seasons. Betty has reasons not to want Glen around Sally, even if she seems to be wrong about Glen's intentions towards Sally. Anyway, there are many layers in this storyline, it's not just that Betty is being an asshole.

Re: Ooops. Betty, not Sally!

[sistermagpie]

Thanks! I hadn't thought of a lot of it until I started really thinking about it, especially the Sally stuff. But oh yeah, Glen. What to even do with that? I always remember Betty telling Glen she had no one to talk to in that first season and it was so sad. But it's like because he saw her like that she has to destroy him or something.

And I agree, sometimes Betty is so childlike it's almost disturbing. The child psychologist makes that even more clear, but even before that she was so childlike. But in a way that I think really showed the reality that she had been brought up to be a child and be treated like one.

[etrangere]

brilliant post.

[sistermagpie]

Thanks!

[oselle]

Sounds like you're reading the forums at TWoP. Lots of insipid "analysis" over there.

I think a lot of people really don't get Mad Men at all because they simply can't put themselves into the minds of those characters or that era. Anyone who says that Betty still has a lot going for her is someone who really doesn't understand Betty or her world at all.

I recently read a blog whose writer was critcizing a review he'd read of Mad Men, in which the reviewer complained that the show never explored things fully -- he mentioned one of the agency guy's black girlfriend as an example of something that was just "left there." The blogger correctly noted that this show is about an entire era when things like that were never explored, they were either never mentioned again or just whispered about.

It would be dishonest and silly for the show to "explore" big issues like race and gender the way we do today. The show works in its own brilliant way by showing us the exact way those issues impacted people's lives at that time...and thereby

[slytherincesss]

Yeah, I can't stand the insipid analysis at TWoP either. I have to totally avoid the Mad Men forums. It's torture enough that I read the American Idol boards.

Agree with you re: the 60s being an era in which things were not explored in general. The turning point was in sight, but the 60s was still an era of deep repression. I was born in 1969 and, yeah, things were not talked about back then. I think for men and women of that era, the inability to deal with things lasted way into the 90s even. Confrontation was considered incredibly uncouth.

[oselle]

LOL, if you think the Mad Men forums are bad, you should check out the Supernatural forums. Talk about insipid.

[slytherincesss]

OMG, I can only imagine the horror. I gave up on Supernatural after season four. I just couldn't take it anymore! I'm almost at that point with The Mentalist.

[slytherincesss]

I always love reading your thoughts and this was no exception! Loved everything you said about Betty. I agree that she is not a one-dimensional character. She's a pretty horrid person, but, you know, you just explained why. Because she's horrid doesn't mean she's not a good character.

I still can't believe the woman who threatened to cut off Sally's fingers is the same woman who fucked her washing machine. I mean really. Excuse my French!

Love what you said about her being the face of misogyny.

[sistermagpie]

LOL! OMG, I had forgotten that for a moment! So typically Betty! I love how often we see Betty having a true story and then a different story for the public. There are times and places for masturbation, Sally! Betty knows the right time!

I loved Don's reaction to the whole thing. She did it in front of a friend? Boy or girl?

[matitablu]

Thanks for this post - I don't feel I can provide any interesting insight atm as it's 4 AM and I don't trust my judgment (lol!), but as a Betty fan, I think it was a very poignant analysys.

Betty, it seems to me, seems destined to be the woman who did everything right, according to the rules, and will forever feel cheated that it didn't pan out.

This, so much. I still (delusionally?) hope she finds a way to cope with at least some of her problems and find a measure of happiness in her life, but yeah, that really describes the Betty we have known so far.

[sistermagpie]

I do too. She just seemed to be in such a bad place last season--and she still has no one to talk to. Her therapist was talking to her husband!

That's the perfect icon for this conversation.